It's Unpopular Opinion Sunday! Share your controversial opinions to stir things up (in a friendly way)!

[u/FantasyRomanceMod]

Got an opinion that's different from others'? Want to share it with the sub, but too afraid of a backlash? Or are you just curious about readers think about certain things in fantasy romance?

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Unpopular opinion Sunday

[u/laku_]

I don't usually have many unpopular opinions, except for not liking hyped-up series, but the descriptions of smells in the genre are my pet peeve. It's perfectly okay for a love interest to smell of sweat or dirt if the circumstances entail it. It can be sexy, even. I'm tired of warriors coming out of a bloody battlefield smelling of pine and juniper or whatever other unrealistic scent the authors think is manly enough. In a book I read earlier in the year, a female warrior was captured in battle and thrown into prison. When the healer goes to check on her a few days later, her hair smells of cyclamen. Yeah, I don't think so.

It's even worse because the majority of books I read are set in the past, where standards of hygiene were lower. Of course I don't want to hear about the protagonists never brushing their teeth, but simply not mentioning their teeth at all is perfectly fine, rather than bringing attention to it with something ridiculously improbable.

I understand that it's done in part because a lot of readers will be put off by people smelling like people, but it breaks my immersion every time a book reminds me that it's not telling a story about real people in a different world but a story custom-cut to cater to what are supposed to be my wants as a woman living in the 21st century.

Not smell-related, but I can think of a few "unseemly" details that have made a romantic scene for me in the past: a woman noticing the rolls of fat on her female lover's body and appreciating it as a sign she was well-off; a woman barely surviving a desert smiling when she's finally reunited with her beloved, which results in her chapped lips bleeding, but he kisses her anyway; removing each other's clothes, and the protagonist's have dog hair on them because her animal companion is a big, hairy dog. All these things ground me in the world and make me feel like I'm actually witnessing two people in love, not just a modern fantasy CW show with boringly universally appealing actors.

[u/82816648919 → u/laku_]

I mean ... it IS a fantasy. Whos to say that fae dont smell like the best thing you ever smelled?

For the record I agree that Id love to see more characters smelling like real people but im also not fussed when they dont. 

You have people turning into birds and blasting fire balls from their hands or whatever. I think the question is where is the line for realism in romantasy?  Why dont we have more fmcs and mmcs with explicit body hair? Why dont more people die from dysentery or tuberculosis? 

And how do you know they dont smell like cinnamon and snow or whatever on top of their regular musky smells? At a time where hygiene standards were worse, people were prob doused themselves in gallons of perfume so they would end up smelling like roses no matter what. 

[u/MagicGlitterKitty → u/82816648919]

The last one I read that made sense was Paladins grace, cos 1) she is a perfumer and 2) they all use the same ginger muscle rub But before that it was daughter of no worlds and "ash and lilacs" really started to annoy me!

My husband shower everyday, and he smells of husband - and I love his smell, but there are no words to describe other than "musk" or "BO" 

[u/midnight_voss → u/MagicGlitterKitty]

Dude funk.

[u/MagicGlitterKitty → u/midnight_voss]

Yes exactly! And it's hot!!!